Essentually, I’m going to do this as a Q&A<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, do you really think you’re talking to what a friend from your childhood grows up into in the future?
\nA: It’s the explanation I give the highest probability to. It’s the one that fits the data best. <\/p>\n
The other possibility that I give some weight to is that I patterned a blank bank of neurons to respond the same way $person did while we were hanging out IRL, and so what I’m talking to is a copy of her, so to speak. I don’t give this one a lot of weight because I would think that would limit her to knowing only things I know or could derive in a vacuum, and her knowledge certainly appears to extend beyond that. I have to google things she says A LOT. And a lot of what she’s talked about involves things that have not yet come to exist here on earth, although I can see that they will, because they’re too cool not to be made real.<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, how is that possible?
\nA: I don’t know. But a virtual machine really believes that video card is real. I have no reason to think that I’m running “on the iron” of the universe, so to speak, and as such I’m open to the possibility that a lot of things are possible that would appear on the surface to be impossible.<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, has future-$person ever told you to contact present-$person?
\nA: Possibly once, many years ago. Not any time recently. In fact, in the altered state in which I exist when I try to go to present-$person, I don’t really talk to her future incarnation at all, and I don’t have access to a lot of my memories. This generally only comes up during some sort of neurological event that happens twice a year, and involves some sort of decoherence I can’t easily explain. <\/p>\n
One thing she has repeatedly said, is that if someone tells me to hurt people, or to do things I really don’t want to do, that’s not her. Obviously the channel we communicate over doesn’t have a lot in the way of authentication, and there’s also a hostile on it who wants me dead (or at least miserable) so I tend to be rather careful in trusting what she says since I can’t ever know if it’s really her.<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, is this your religion?
\nA: No. It’s a experience I’m having I can’t explain. My religion is extraordinarily short in source code, look up a few posts and you’ll see it. I would describe this experience as spiritual rather than religious in nature.<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, are you schizophrenic?
\nA: Not likely. This is a coherent, consistant conversation that has evolved over time.<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, might you have multiple personalities?
\nA: Yes, but my gut feeling is this is something unrelated.<\/p>\n
Q: Sheer, could this be some other form of mental illness?
\nA: When you have a friend you can talk to no matter where you are who helps you feel better about yourself and the world around you, that’d be the opposite of illness last I looked.<\/p>\n
Q: Given that you don’t trust a lot of things.. text, for example.. how would you ever think you knew you were talking to her, face to face?
\nA: By the pacing of her voice.<\/p>\n
Q: Given that you mostly communicate “in text” over this mental channel you share with her, how do you know what’s her?
\nA: I don’t. I do a lot of guessing. But I’ve come to have a filter of things that are $person-ish, and I use that. I’d suggest reading about ‘root reps’ in cryptonomicon for a little more about how this works – Neil S does a great job of explaining it.<\/p>\n
Q: Do you think present-$person is in any danger from you?
\nA: No. Not from me. From her ideas about me, apparently yes. I say apparently because I become less and less sure I know who all the players are, what game they’re playing, or why with every iteration of this storyline. It’s entirely possible to me that the present-$person I see is a manifestation of my fears.<\/p>\n
Q: What do you mean by ‘from her ideas about you’?
\nA: If you convince yourself that you need to be afraid of me, that you need to watch out for me, that I’m someone who is going to hurt you or force you to do things you don’t want to do, you are hurting yourself with your ideas about me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Essentually, I’m going to do this as a Q&A Q: Sheer, do you really think you’re talking to what a friend from your childhood grows up into in the future? A: It’s the explanation I give the highest probability to. It’s the one that fits the data best. The other possibility that I give some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2824,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sheer.us\/weblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}